No matter what industry your organization is in, chances are you’re working with third parties, whether for strategy consulting, IT, financial purposes, you name it. As these third-party relationships expand, many organizations are prioritizing a more formal third party risk management implementation to ensure proper oversight from the beginning.
Today, we often look to third parties to tackle a task that might take us longer to do, cost more money or require more people to complete. For example, your organization might hire a cybersecurity firm to monitor for threats and hackers because it would take significantly more effort to build your own security program. In scenarios like this, a structured TPRM implementation helps ensure third-party onboarding and monitoring are handled consistently.
But by working with third parties, there’s a certain level of risk that comes with the relationship. Going back to that cybersecurity company, your organization might’ve shared passwords with them so they can properly watch over your systems and servers. However, if your passwords end up in the wrong hands, your organization’s most sensitive information could be compromised, especially without a defined third party risk management implementation process in place.
We recently spoke with Asureti Principal and Founder Melissa Ryan and Senior Manager, Technology and Security Risk Services, Andrew Howard, about TPRM and how Asureti has leveraged technology to help strengthen its third-party risk management implementation. Asureti provides professional services to help clients simplify compliance, manage risk and protect their data.
Key Takeaways
Third-party risk management (TPRM) evaluates and mitigates risks from outsourcing to vendors and service providers.
Organizations must identify and assess their third parties to understand the risks associated with shared data.
Building a TPRM program involves classifying, prioritizing vendors, and defining roles for management of third-party relationships.
Leveraging technology, like Onspring’s solution, automates risk assessments and enhances collaboration on vendor information.
A checklist of questions for evaluating third-party relationships helps ensure compliance and security before engagement.
Third-party risk management is the concept of analyzing and minimizing risk associated with outsourced vendors or service providers.
“If you’re wondering whether or not you work with a third party, think about the embedded tools you use often, such as Google Analytics, Meta, or a similar website tracking software,” said Andrew. “In this example, you’re giving Google Analytics access to your company’s website through a piece of tracking code. It becomes crucial to understand how that code is generated and what Google’s cybersecurity program looks like, so you can arm your organization with the right tools in case of a cyber breach.”
Not handling these risks appropriately can have a big effect on your company—affecting your organization’s reputation, harming your client’s personal data, preventing supply chain operations, etc.
Instead, organizations must identify their third parties and understand exactly how they fit inside their ecosystem. The two most important questions to answer are: Who are our vendors and what information is being shared? We’ve prepared an additional checklist of questions at the end of this article to help get you started in your TPRM program.
If it’s necessary to share sensitive data with your third parties, remember to properly train them on the use of the information. To learn how Asureti is implementing best practices for managing their third-party relationships, watch the full webinar recording.
5 Steps for Third-Party Risk Management Implementation
Building an effective third-party risk management (TPRM) program requires more than a one-time third-party review. Successful third party risk management implementation follows a structured, repeatable lifecycle that ensures third-parties are identified, assessed, prioritized and continuously managed throughout the relationship. By taking a systematic approach, organizations can reduce risk exposure while maintaining operational efficiency and compliance.
1. Identify and Inventory Third Parties
To start, identify the third-partys, partners and tools your organization uses regularly, including any outside consulting companies you work with to outsource tasks and processes. As part of your TPRM implementation, create a centralized inventory that documents what services each third-party provides, what systems or data they access and which internal teams own the relationship.
Establishing a complete third-party inventory provides visibility across your ecosystem and ensures no third party is overlooked in your third party risk management implementation.
2. Assess Third-Party Risk Exposure
Next, begin your risk assessment for each third party. This includes understanding how your organization works with that party, what information they have access to and how many people can access that information. A structured assessment process may include standardized questionnaires, security documentation reviews and evaluation of financial or operational stability.
After the assessment, each third party should be graded based on the level of risk they pose. It’s important to conduct these assessments on a regular basis, typically once a year, or more frequently for high-risk third-partys, to account for changes that may affect your overall risk posture. Ongoing reassessments are a critical component of effective TPRM implementation.
3. Classify and Prioritize Based on Risk Tier
Upon completing third-party assessments and grading each party, rank them according to their level of risk. Many organizations use a tiered model, such as Tier 1 for high-risk or business-critical third-partys, to allocate resources appropriately.
“You don’t want to spend precious time developing risk management plans for third-partys that are lower risk, don’t have access to sensitive data, or don’t produce high exposure from a financial or reputational perspective,” said Melissa. “By assigning numeric scores and visual indicators, we’re able to determine where to focus our time and how to be efficient on the priority risk areas.”
Prioritization ensures that your third-party risk management implementation focuses the most attention on third-partys that pose the greatest potential impact.
4. Define Governance, Roles and Accountability
Define teams for each third-party relationship and clearly outline their roles, along with an account lead who’s responsible for managing the relationship and supporting the TPRM program. Clear governance and accountability are essential to a scalable third party risk management implementation.
“It becomes a problem when organizations don’t properly define the team and risk management processes,” said Melissa. “Each department might take on the roles that they’re experts in and assume the other tasks are being worked on by the appropriate team. A cross-functional team ensures that all tasks are completed and meet proper industry standards.”
Documented ownership, cross-functional collaboration and defined escalation paths help eliminate gaps in oversight.
5. Leverage Technology to Scale TPRM Implementation
Finally, technology is your friend in managing third-party risk so you can focus on building relationships and keeping business moving. The right tool will automate the assessment process, maintain third-party prioritization and notify your team of any changes that could introduce new risks.
Modern TPRM implementation relies on automation to support continuous monitoring rather than manual, one-time reviews. Centralized documentation, automated reassessments and real-time alerts help ensure third-party risks are identified and addressed before they impact your organization.
Leveraging Technology for TPRM
Leveraging technology helps identify and assess your third parties, not to mention monitor them for changes in risk levels. By using automation tools, your organization no longer has to spend precious time filtering through and prioritizing third parties based on arbitrary measurements. And Onspring’s Third-Party Risk Management solution can help you do just that.
“We use Onspring as our centralized platform to manage third-party relationships, and since it acts as our single source of truth, both our organization and our third parties are always on the same page and understand the risks at play,” said Melissa. “Everyone can come to one place to see the risks, status, information, etc., and we benefit, too, because it holds people accountable.”
By utilizing a GRC automation platform such as Onspring, organizations are able to automate the notification process for monitoring dates and triggers for certain TPRM cycles. Onspring specifically has dashboards built for each of these processes, along with ones that organize tasks and upcoming deadlines for their risk management team.
For Asureti, instead of spending time keeping track of tasks and manually sending out targeted reminders for each task, Onspring does that for them. Below are some additional benefits Asureti has realized since implementing Onspring:
Eliminate your reliance on spreadsheets and emails
Automate issuing and follow-up of third-party risk assessments
Assign and track mitigations and remediations
Collaborate on a single source of truth with a centralized repository of vendors, assessments, risks, and mitigations
Integrate with existing procurement, contracting, and accounts payable processes
Leverage market content providers for key risk information
“One of the huge wins we’ve been able to leverage from a technology and GRC perspective is automating some of those pieces. These dashboards are super helpful, not only for me and my team, but my business owners, too. So, everyone’s looking at the same information, working off the current status, knowing what’s in their queue. And management can come in and understand status workloads, work queues, and key issues.”
— Melissa Ryan, Asureti
Key Components of a Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) Program
A successful third party risk management implementation relies on several foundational components that guide how organizations identify, assess, monitor and mitigate third-party risk. These elements ensure compliance, operational resilience and scalable oversight across the third-party lifecycle.
Key components of a TPRM program include:
Governance and Policies: Define clear roles, responsibilities, escalation paths and risk ownership to ensure accountability across teams.
Vendor Inventory and Risk Classification: Maintain a centralized inventory of all third parties and classify third-partys by criticality, data access, and potential risk exposure.
Due Diligence and Vendor Selection: Conduct comprehensive assessments of a third-party’s security controls, compliance posture, financial health and reputation before onboarding.
Contract Management: Include data protection clauses, service-level agreements (SLAs), incident response requirements and regulatory obligations in third-party contracts.
Risk Assessment and Prioritization: Evaluate the likelihood and impact of each identified risk, aligning assessment frequency with third-party criticality.
Risk Mitigation and Remediation: Implement corrective actions and track remediation plans to reduce exposure and prevent risk escalation.
Continuous Monitoring: Track third-party performance, SLA adherence and emerging risks over time using dashboards and automated alerts.
Vendor Offboarding: Ensure secure termination of relationships, including revoking access, returning or destroying data and properly closing contracts.
Technology and Automation: Leverage TPRM platforms to streamline assessments, centralize documentation, generate reports and scale monitoring efforts efficiently.
By integrating these key components into your third party risk management implementation, organizations can create a structured, repeatable process that reduces third-party risk, maintains compliance and supports long-term operational resilience.
Who Needs Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) Implementation?
Any organization that relies on external third-partys, suppliers or service providers can benefit from a structured third party risk management implementation. As businesses outsource more critical functions, from IT infrastructure to payroll processing, third-party risk increasingly becomes business risk. While every industry should maintain oversight of third-party relationships, certain sectors and operating models face elevated regulatory scrutiny, cybersecurity exposure and operational complexity that make formal TPRM implementation essential.
Organizations that particularly benefit from third-party risk management implementation include:
Financial services organizations: Banks, credit unions, fintech companies and investment firms operate under strict regulatory oversight and are frequent cyberattack targets. Vendors often process sensitive financial data or support core systems, making structured TPRM implementation critical for audit readiness, compliance and operational resilience.
Healthcare and life sciences organizations: Hospitals, insurers and medical technology providers routinely share protected health information (PHI) with third parties. A mature TPRM implementation helps ensure third-partys meet privacy and security requirements while safeguarding patient data across the third-party lifecycle.
Technology and SaaS providers: Cloud-based platforms depend on data processors, infrastructure providers and subcontractors. Effective third party risk management implementation enables these organizations to manage fourth-party risk, maintain contractual security commitments and preserve customer trust.
Government contractors and public sector entities: Organizations handling sensitive or regulated government data must demonstrate strong third-party oversight. A formal TPRM implementation supports compliance documentation, certification requirements and defensible audit trails.
Mid-sized to enterprise organizations with complex third-party ecosystems: As companies scale, third-party networks expand. Multi-third-party supply chains, global partnerships and outsourced services increase exposure. A scalable TPRM implementation framework provides centralized visibility, standardized assessments and executive-level reporting to manage risk effectively.
Regardless of industry, if your organization depends on third parties to deliver critical services, a structured third party risk management implementation is a strategic investment in long-term stability, compliance and growth.
Third-Party Risk Management Checklist
When evaluating your third-parties and third-party relationships, it’s important to have a structured approach. This third-party risk management (TPRM) checklist highlights key questions to answer before fully engaging with a third-party. Asureti recommends reviewing these questions prior to signing a contract and revisiting them at least annually to ensure the third party continues to meet expectations and minimize risk.
Establishing Goals in TPRM
What is the purpose of working with the third party? What is our ‘why’?
How are we classifying our third-party relationships? Which ones should we prioritize over others, and why?
TPRM Security
What data or information do we need to share? How will it be shared? And who will have access to it?
Do we need to train the third party in how to handle the data or information?
If there’s a breach on the third-party’s side, what are they responsible for? And how does that affect us?
Roles & Responsibilities in TPRM
What are our responsibilities and those of the third party?
Who owns third-party risk at our organization? Who needs to be involved?
Who will be in charge of this vendor relationship?
Is there any training that needs to take place, on our side or theirs, to work with them?
Who are our key contacts from the third-party?
TPRM Technology
What technology do they use?
Is there any technology we need to learn to use in order to work with the third party?
TPRM Regulation
What regulation requirements do they need? Is the third party compliant? Do they have the proper certifications? What are they?
What policies, if any, do they have in place?
Reporting Within TPRM
What process do we have in place for monitoring our third-party relationships?
What do we need to report on? And how will we do that?
Who needs to receive the reports and how frequently?
If you’d like to learn more about how Onspring’s Third-Party Risk Management solution can help your organization, reach out to us at hello@onspring.com.
Michelle Randall is a five-time CMO and B2B technology veteran, bringing over two decades of SaaS industry expertise to Onspring. She champions new marketing opportunities across enterprise, federal, and SLED markets, driving growth and building on the company’s impressive customer loyalty. When she’s not transforming GRC into a strategic advantage, you can find Michelle enjoying the Colorado mountains.
